Conservation leader hooked on trout

Friday

Mike Kruse lays claim to being Columbia’s most avid trout fly fisherman, and since Jan. 1 he has been the director of the Missouri Department of Conservation Resource Science Center in Columbia.

Mike has caught trout in 28 states, in New Zealand, England, Canada and Italy. His biggest catch was a 28-inch brown taken on the North Island of New Zealand; his most appreciated was another brown caught in Italy.

He had wanted to catch a brown trout in its natural habitat, and that meant a trip to Italy.

Catching trout is Mike’s avocation — and making them available for Missouri’s fishermen has been his vocation for more than two decades.

His infatuation with fish began early in life. He was born in Columbia in 1960, the only child of Alice and Norris Kruse, the longtime coach and athletic director at Oakland Junior High School.

Mike played basketball at Jefferson Junior high in seventh and eighth grade, then became a varsity distance runner at Hickman High.

As a youngster, he was introduced to Spencer Turner, known by trout fishermen as the “father of Missouri’s trout program.” Mike learned to fly-fish, and Spencer became his mentor. He was hooked on fishing early.

Mike fished and ran as a Kewpie, finishing 12th in the state in cross-country as a senior and sixth in the state two-mile. He was co-captain of the track team with Gary Anderson and ran on the 4-by-880 relay team of Lance Patterson and Jim and Tom Kernell that set the school record.

He then fished and ran cross-country at the University of Missouri for two years before his work toward a degree in fisheries and wildlife became more important.

Upon graduation from MU in 1983, he moved on to the State University of New York-Syracuse for a master’s degree in environment and forestry management and met and married Robin Viola, who was working on her doctorate in the same field.

Mike then gained great field experience, working a year in Wisconsin on the effects of acid rain on lakes, then a year with the Conservation Department in fisheries management in the Kirksville area before returning to Columbia and 17 years as fisheries research biologist at the Resource Science Center.

Among his major projects were working with bluegill in small lakes, largemouth bass in reservoirs, smallmouth bass in Ozark streams, and with the trout program at Shepherd of the Hills hatchery on Lake Taneycomo.

By 2003, he was supervisor of the fisheries division, where he served until taking over the resource center in Columbia.

Mike is no longer a runner, but he is an avid bicyclist and a huge fan of bicycle road racing. While chasing brown trout in Italy, he had a chance to watch a stage of the Tour of Italy and see Lance Armstrong up close. Armstrong is right up there with Spencer Turner on Mike’s list of role models.

Mike and Robin have two kids. David, 21, is a psychology major at MU, and Anne is a senior at Rock Bridge High and a dance devotee.

Robin is on the faculty of the MU medical school, involved in family and community medicine. She made a career change from wildlife biology because the Conservation Department had a rule at the time against spouses working for the department when they returned to Missouri.

Several years ago, Robin’s parents, who lived near Albany, N.Y., decided to share their lives with their only child and the grandkids and moved to Columbia. What a great addition to our community! The Kruse grandparents are Sue and Al Viola, two of our area’s most devoted volunteers, who are essentially full-time staff members of the Boone County Historical Society — as volunteers!

When Mike’s mom met Robin, she warned her: “Mike was put on this earth to fish.”

And we’re all better off for it — even the fish he catches. Mike is a catch-and-release guy.

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